American photographer Branson DeCou (1892-1941) traveled the world with his camera and left behind an extraordinarily beautiful Ireland collection, which he painted over in colored ink.

He gives us a quite personal, rare glimpse into the rural and urban Ireland of the 1930s – “a way of life that has long since disappeared,” said Wexfordarchaeologist Colm Moriarty on his blog.

Moriarty compiled a number of DeCou’s images of various Irish counties with the subtext, “the past is a foreign country.”

DeCou used aniline ink to give the black and white photographs a new lease of life in soft, almost washed out hues of pink, green, blue, yellow and more. His catalog is now stored at the University of California, Santa Cruz.